As Dan Aykroyd continues his insane quest to make a third Ghostbusters movie, he's hit on the crackpottiest idea yet — recasting the role of Peter Venkman, played by Bill Murray in the first two movies.

At least, that's what Aykroyd told Empire Magazine when he visited with them over the weekend. On the plus side, though, he promised that Rick Moranis would be a major part of any Ghostbusters threequel. Which totally compensates for the loss of Bill Murray, no?

And Aykroyd vehemently denied that Murray had put the GB3 script in a shredder or said that nobody wants to see fat old men chasing ghosts:

Bill Murray is not capable of such behaviour. This is simply something that would not be in his nature. We have a deep, private personal relationship that transcends business. We communicate frequently and his position on the involvement in Ghostbusters 3 has been made clear and I respect that. But Bill has too much positive estimation of my writing skills to shred the work.

Which is odd, since earlier reports said the Ghostbusters III script had actually been written by the Year One duo of Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg.

Anyway, which latter-day comedian do you think should be the new Peter Venkman? Jack Black? Jim Carrey? Ashton Kutcher? Will Ferrell? Kevin James? There are so many possibilities. [Empire]